A Visitor's Guide to Jane Austen's England Quotes

“As late as 1800, you will see dogs employed as turnspits in inns or country houses. The dog is placed inside a wooden wheel (like a treadmill) mounted on the wall. The wheel is attached to the meat-jack by a link or pulley; as the dog runs inside the wheel, the meat turns round and is evenly roasted. Large households keep two turnspit dogs, which work on alternate days.”
― Sue Wilkes, A Visitor's Guide to Jane Austen's England

“The summer of 1801 was so unseasonably chilly that Parson Woodforde, who seems to have kept a fatherly eye on his lady visitors’ clothing, recorded on 11 July: ‘It was so very cold to day [sic] that we had a fire – Mrs Custance also felt the cold so much that she wore a fur Tippett [sic], a bosom friend & a Muff and a Winter Cloke [sic]’.”
― Sue Wilkes, A Visitor's Guide to Jane Austen's England

“For example, in Pride and Prejudice (1813), Mr Darcy’s ‘personal estate’ of £10,000 p.a. would approximate to an income of £610,000 p.a. at 2013 prices, so he would still be a highly eligible bachelor today.”
― Sue Wilkes, A Visitor's Guide to Jane Austen's England

“The writer warns that ‘the girl of fifteen who strives not to please, will be a shrew and a slut at twenty-five.”
― Sue Wilkes, A Visitor's Guide to Jane Austen's England

“The big question is, will you or won’t you waltz? In this wildly successful but daring new dance, introduced at Almack’s in about 1815, a lady must actually permit a young man to put his arm round her waist. Captain Gronow recalled: ‘There were comparatively few who at first ventured to whirl round the salons of Almack’s.’ Young ladies should only waltz with a gentleman friend or one they’ve been introduced to, and they must not waltz at all before they are ‘out’. When you waltz for the first time, it’s initially alarming to feel the heat of a man’s arm through your thin muslin gown. The poet Lord Byron, who knew a thing or two about seduction, disapproved of the ‘lewd grasp, and lawless contact warm,’ which the waltz’s dancers enjoyed:”
― Sue Wilkes, A Visitor's Guide to Jane Austen's England

“In his famous novel Émile (1762), Rousseau tries to show that boys should be brought up as close to nature as possible, learning by experience. Girls do not need to be educated rationally: their role in life is to please men. Accordingly, Thomas abstracted two girls from orphanages and named them Sabrina and Lucretia. He took them to France to educate them according to Rousseau’s precepts so that one girl could become the perfect wife (one was a spare). He taught them to read and write, and tried to instil in them a hatred of fripperies like fashion, fine titles and luxuries. While the girls were growing up, Day became enamoured of several genteel women, none of whom were prepared to conform to his ideas of wifely perfection. Meanwhile, Lucretia did not cope well with Day’s training programme and he was forced to abandon the experiment. He gave her some money and she later married a shopkeeper. However, Thomas became more and more attached to Sabrina, and their friends expected them to marry. According to Richard Lovell Edgeworth in his Memoirs, Day was ‘never more loved by any woman… nor do I believe, that any woman was to him ever personally more agreeable.’ But Sabrina ‘was too young and artless, to feel the extent of that importance, which my friend [Day] annexed to trifling concessions or resistance to fashion, particularly with respect to female dress.’ Day left Sabrina at a friend’s house, along with some strict instructions on her mode of dress. Then disaster struck over a ‘trifling circumstance… She did, or did not, wear certain long sleeves, and some handkerchief, which had been the object of his dislike, or of his liking.’ Unfortunately Day equated her obedience to his wishes with proof of her attachment; disobedience proved ‘her want of strength of mind.’ So Thomas ‘quitted her for ever!’ He later married a Yorkshire heiress; Sabrina married a barrister.”
― Sue Wilkes, A Visitor's Guide to Jane Austen's England

“The author Mary Wollstonecraft (later the wife of William Godwin) disapproved of young women marrying too soon. In Thoughts on the Education of Daughters (J. Johnson, 1787) she commented: ‘Many [girls] are but just returned from a boarding school, when they are placed at the head of a family, and how fit they are to manage it, I leave the judicious to judge.’ Young girls did not have enough experience of the world to make an informed choice: ‘Many women, I am persuaded, marry a man before they are twenty, whom they would have rejected some years after.”
― Sue Wilkes, A Visitor's Guide to Jane Austen's England

“The eldest daughter of a family is always addressed as ‘Miss’ followed by her surname, e.g. Jane, the eldest Bennet girl, is ‘Miss Bennet’. The younger daughters are addressed as ‘Miss’ followed by their first name and surname, e.g. ‘Miss Elizabeth Bennet’. It is most impolite to address a lady or gentleman by their Christian name unless you are a close relative. In Emma, Miss Woodhouse is appalled by Mrs Elton’s overfamiliarity – she calls Mr Knightley ‘Knightley’ and Jane Fairfax by her full name, instead of ‘Miss Fairfax’: ‘Heavens! Let me not suppose that she dares go about Emma Woodhouse-ing me! But, upon my honour, there seem no limits to the licentiousness of that woman’s tongue!’ Frank Churchill, too, Jane’s secret fiancé, is upset when he hears ‘“Jane”… bandied between the Eltons, with all the vulgarity of needless repetition, and all the insolence of imaginary superiority.”
― Sue Wilkes, A Visitor's Guide to Jane Austen's England

“A duel may be triggered by a seemingly trivial offence. In 1806, the poet Thomas Moore’s Irish blood boiled following a scathing review of his poems by Francis Jeffrey in the Edinburgh Review. He challenged Jeffrey to a duel and bought pistols and ammunition in a Bond Street shop. Fortunately the duel (at Chalk Farm) was stopped by some Bow Street Runners. Moore and Jeffrey were arrested and taken before the Bow Street magistrates, and their guns examined. To Moore’s dismay, it was found that his pistol was loaded but Jeffrey’s was not: the ball had fallen out, probably when the duel was interrupted. A rumour spread that both pistols were unloaded, implying that the duellists were cowards; Moore wrote to the newspapers in an attempt to clear his name. Meanwhile, Lord Byron mocked Moore’s ‘leadless pistol’ in his poem English Bards and Scotch Reviewers (1809). Moore sent a challenge to Byron but his lordship had gone abroad. The two poets later became great friends.”
― Sue Wilkes, A Visitor's Guide to Jane Austen's England

“In this enlightened age, the fashionable set visit institutions for the cure of ‘lunatics’, where human beings are kept in conditions little better than a zoo. For example, if you obtain a ticket of admission from one of the governors, you can gawp at the inmates of Bethlem Royal Hospital at Moorfields, London. At ‘Bedlam’, as it is colloquially known, men and women spend their days practically naked (except for a blanket gown), chained and fettered, and lying on straw. In 1803 Bethlem is open to visitors on Mondays, Wednesdays and Fridays.”
― Sue Wilkes, A Visitor's Guide to Jane Austen's England

“The London ‘season’ is the busiest time of the year for socialites, and the nobility and great county families like Mr Darcy’s in Pride and Prejudice keep a house in town. The ‘season’ begins early in the New Year and continues until early summer, when families decamp to their country retreats or fashionable watering holes like Margate. In autumn the ‘little season’ brings the upper classes scurrying back to London to enjoy a brief social whirlwind before winter fieldsports begin and they return to their estates.”
― Sue Wilkes, A Visitor's Guide to Jane Austen's England